Pratt: Death not a popular topic, but it's a necessary one

Age is an attitude informed by faith or the lack of faith.

A fly, defying the cold, sits on the outside of my kitchen window, reminding me of a many-versed rhyme song “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” that drew a quizzical expression from a young granddaughter.

I found it in the Silly Song section of “The Fireside Book of Children’s Songs,” published in 1966 by Simon and Schuster. Years later, I found the song also illustrated as a children’s book.

The words written by Rose Bonne and set to music by Alan Mills, musical arranger for the collection of songs, are simple: “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly, I don’t know why she swallowed a fly. I think she’ll die.”

In the second verse the old lady swallows a spider “that wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don’t know why she swallowed the fly. I think she’ll die.”

And on it goes, the old lady swallowing in rhythmic order a bird, a cat, a dog, a goat, a cow and finally, a horse, ending with four spoken words, “She died of course.”

I think it was the part about dying that bothered my granddaughter.

Death may not be a popular topic, but it is a tough one to avoid after a certain age as our mail boxes are flooded with reminders that one should make plans in advance.

Speaking of death, I was beginning to wonder about Dave Barry, who along with the late Irma Bombeck, were for years my favorite humor columnists. Dave resurfaced recently with a book titled “You Can Date Boys When You’re Forty,” which purports to be about parenting but covers other topics about which he knows little, he says.

One of those topics is exacerbated by what he receives in the mail. It is not so much that personal letters are almost a thing of the past and his mailbox now contains basically “home delivery land-fill” that makes him hate it, he says, but that it is telling him six days a week that he is old.

“Dear David,” my mail is saying, “You may already be dead!”

But neither Dave nor I need to tell you about the funeral plan offers, the reverse mortgage, medical solutions for impotence and other advertising that appears with regularity once we celebrate a 50th birthday. You and I also get this mail.

Much of this stuff is written by 30 somethings who imagine life as they cherish it ends by 40 or earlier. And they are partly correct. What they don’t know and won’t know until they experience the middle to upper reaches of the average life span is that a somewhat worn and wrinkled package does not mean real life is over.

Somewhere I still have a list of people who after they were 80 years old made amazingly important inventions, scientific discoveries or provided wise leadership in times of crisis. The list was sent to me years ago when I was doing a midlife whine about getting older. Age is an attitude informed by faith or the lack of faith.

In his book “God Loves You: He Always Has — He Always Will,” Dr. David Jeremiah uses a misquotation of John 3:16 by a child, “whoever believes on Him should not perish but have internal life” (correct quote, eternal life).

“This time the theology is as sound as the humor,” notes Jeremiah, quoting John 10:10, in which Jesus says he came that “we might have life, and that we might have it more abundantly.”

And just in case you might be the old lady (or man) who swallowed the fly and are working up to swallowing the horse, you might like to read Hank Hanegraaff’s “AfterLife,” in a question-answer format subtitled “What you need to know about Heaven, the Hereafter & Near-death Experiences.”

BETH PRATT RETIRED AS RELIGION EDITOR FROM THE AVALANCHE-JOURNAL AFTER 25 YEARS. YOU CAN EMAIL HER AT BETH.PRATT@CHEERFUL.COM.